MEMORY KEEPING 101 – ORGANIZING YOUR STASH WITH HISTORIAN
Why Historian?
When it comes to permanent online storage you own, there just isn’t anything better than Forever. However, you might have wondered how to get your digital files ready for it. You don’t have to tell me Forever storage is a big investment. For most of us, our digital horde far outweighs the legacy we’d like to pass on to the future.
Historian is the answer. When you’re dealing with hard copy photos and memorabilia, your tools are tabletops, Ziplocks and boxes. You can buy a variety of fancy tools for this project, from boxes and files, to labels and dividers but I just use what I have at home with time.
Curating photos, traditionally and digitally, takes time. Facing a phone, laptop or app full of photos can seem quite overwhelming and if you think of it in view of purchasing permanent storage to hold it all, then it is not only overwhelming, it is daunting.
Historian is the halfway house for your digital stash. I’ve always struggled with organizing photos with my computer. For one thing it will let me save the same pictures in 47 places. It may notify me when I try to put it in the same file, but Historian goes further than that and will let me know when I am saving the same picture anywhere in my stash. With tagging I can find it in several different ways, without taking up valuable space saving it multiple times.
Historian also reads the time stamp from metadata and puts the photos in historical order. How wonderful is that?
Another amazing feature is face recognition. Yes, face recognition. Once you take some time to teach it the faces in your life, it will go ahead and tag them automatically for you.
And stars! You can use stars to rate each photo, which will help you when it comes time to decide what to put on Forever, what to delete and what you’ll just keep on Historian for right now.
I could go on with all the wonderful tools you have for sorting and organizing photos on Historian, but I think you get the picture (wink, wink).
It Both Saves Time and Takes Time
All these automatic time-saving tricks are great, but I’m not going to kid you. To do it right will take time. For instance, I just wanted to take my whole photo folder and dump it there. You can’t do that. You can transfer every photo from a folder, no matter how many there are, but it won’t take folders. So, getting it all in there will take time. (At least you can’t do folders right now. Valet is coming this spring and that will change everything.)
However, it’s good to take time. I decided to dump about 300 photos in there as my first bite. I individually name tagged one photo and then hit Auto Face Recognition. It took me awhile to train the program the difference between the 50 or so people I had dumped on it. If I’d taken things a little slower, it would have been easier, but I don’t do things by half measures. From now on, all I’ll have to do is confirm the faces it recognizes and straighten it out when it gets something wrong.
To be honest, I’m still just learning the program. I had been under the impression I didn’t need it, until I started doing digital sorting jobs for my clients. I didn’t want to be stuck with the limited tools in Microsoft and I didn’t want to buy enough Forever storage to hold everything a client passed on to me. Now I don’t know how I’d live without it.
The very best part is this. When it comes time to transfer your images from Historian and Forever, they are fully integrated, so everything you did to organize your photos in Historian will show up on Forever. That does not happen when I upload directly from my Microsoft files. Oh happy days!!
If you have digital mess, then you’re going to want Historian! Let’s talk about it. Give me a call at 972-971-5263!
Remember when getting your printed photos was fun. You took pictures with a camera, not your phone. You used film, not an SD card. You couldn’t look at or share the photo until the film was developed. You’d gather up all your rolls of film and take them to the drug store to get printed. They took your photos and sent them to a lab and a few days later, you could have your photos. Seeing what you shot was like reliving your vacation or event. You even loved the bad photos.
Photo printing became big business and getting your photos back fast became the gold standard. Eventually, we all expected to get photos back in an hour, but instead of a technician in a lab developing your photos, you had some high school kid running the film through a machine that may or may not have been properly maintained, so those pictures might or might not be worth the paper they were printed on.
Along Came Digital
In my opinion, digital cameras were not an improvement. Suddenly, a whole new layer of challenges stood between me and my photographs. Yes, I know all about the improved photo quality and some people might like all that editing, but I liked dropping it off at the drug store and waiting a few day for the photos.
I’ve tried a lot of things since the advent of digital photography – printing the photos myself, taking a disc to the drug store or big box store and I’ve used SO many of the online photo printing services that I could not start to name them all.
An Education in Exploitation
Then a couple of years ago I discovered Forever and it has totally changed my outlook on the whole process, from where I store my images to where I get them printed and why. Have you ever wondered why so many places are so eager to print your photos and why they are willing to do it for such a cheap price? Try reading one of those terms and agreements that pop up as you fill in the blanks on your order. That would be an eye-opening experience.
Basically, when you download your photos to Shutterfly, Snapfish, MixBook, Costco, Walgreens – you name it, you sign an agreement which transfers the rights to your photos to that company. In turn, they do print photos for you on the cheap, but in return, they’ll use those photos for all kinds of things you never dream your photos would be subjected to. We’ve all heard horror stories about people seeing the photos they post on Facebook ending up in an ad campaign or on the dark web or other equally bad scenarios. The same thing happens when you upload your photos for printing.
And print quality? Once I spent a day editing a set of gorgeous vacation photos. I sent them off to Snapfish and eagerly awaited their delivery. The images I sent were sharp, crisp and beautiful. The images I got back were hazy. I’d been in the photography business long enough at that point to know something had happened to my images since I edited them and I was right. The company compressed all the photos before printing, because they could only handle up to a certain resolution. Sure it was all there in the terms and agreements, but who reads those.
So Now I Know
Then I found Forever. Instead of loading my photos onto a commercial site where who know what would happen to them, I load them into my very own online storage that I own. Nobody will ever mine my photos for advertising, sell them for stock photmpress them. When I want to print, I just choose the photos I want out of my account and order whatever size photo I want.
And here’s a tip. You know those letters and numbers on the back of some photos. Ever wonder who makes those up? Ever try to read them and decide what they mean. You can actually control what that says with Forever. That’s a big help.
Another Choice
So, you may be thinking to yourself, but I don’t WANT to store my photos on Forever. I just want to print them! OK, fine! But I have another option. Don’t go to the big box stores of online photo processing. You can print your photos with Creative Memories. Amazing quality, no compression, and yes you can control the print on the back of the photos.
What’s more, you’ll get your images back in these cool little plastic boxes that keeps them all nice and neat until you use them in your scrapbook. Then they are great for storing embellishments. I love them!!
When you are considering how you are going to handle your memory keeping, please consider me. I have all the answers you will ever need and sometime I have more than one way to do what you want. Come back next and let’s do some more memory keeping together.
On Friday night I met some of my favorite people at a place which is destined to become one of my favorites, Rosini Vineyards. Friday night usually finds me safely tucked away at home, but this week I was invited to join a group of girls from my real estate world at Rosini’s, a couple of our favorite agents and some folks from the lending and title world. Names and stories will be forever a secret, but I can tell you about Rosini’s.
I have no idea why I haven’t been there before. I have been invited to several occasions hosted there, but I’ve always had more demanding things on my schedule. I added it to my list of things I wanted to do, but hadn’t gotten there, yet. Now I want to go every Friday. The thing is, the space is small and you need to make reservations and making reservations is one of my challenges. Hubby likes spontaneity and doing things by the seat of our pants. In his defense, when we do make plans ahead, something usually comes up and we’re scrambling to get to whatever plans we made.
Do plan on making a visit, however. Get out your phone and make a reservation, because it is so worth it. The ambiance is great, the food is good and so is the wine. They had a musician entertaining and he was smart enough to play in the background so there was good (and hysterical) conversation around the table.
I ordered a Charcuterie Board for us and it was both lovely and tasty. Most of my friends were sharing bottles, but I wanted to taste more than one wine. They don’t show it on the menu, but they also offer tastings. I’d hoped to be served a flight, but instead you have to keep going back to the bar to get the next taste. I didn’t buy up cases of anything to take home, but most of the selections I tried were quite nice.
Favorite Things on Saturday
I woke up early on Saturday (big surprise, right) and hit the scrapbooking studio (another big surprise). I’m doing my travel album for 2022 and the best news there is that there was travel. Covid kept us close to home. We weren’t afraid of the disease. We just didn’t want the hassle or the travel photos with of masks. I’d finished up New York and set out on our Club Med Sandpiper Bay trip and before the weekend was over, I had worked my way to St. Louis for Joyce Meyer.
But that was just the tip of my Memory Keeping iceberg. FOREVER was having their Family History Online Event. I wanted to watch it live, because if I didn’t, where else was I going to find three hours in my schedule. Some friends and customers were planning to come join me, but a variety of things got in the way. Still I hooked my laptop up to the TV and settled down for a wave of ideas.
There was a lot of good information there, but most of it really wasn’t applicable to my own memory keeping journey. I’m not a genealogy enthusiast, I no longer have an older generation to video and I haven’t quite embraced video as my own media. I get it. FOREVER’S Family Research Services are amazing and video freaks need their own streaming service. I’m not those people. At least not yet.
However, there was more. They walked through the digitization process and the advantages of their storage. They also dug deep into the Auto Print products, which are amazing, but just not in my thing. What I did walk away with was a new appreciation for QR codes. I’m always challenged by which photos and words to put on a Christmas Card. With QR codes, I can not only put a QR code which will lead to an entire file of photos (or a video), but I can actually add an audio file which would allow me to say what I wanted to say without having to fit all the words on the card. Watch this space later this year and see if I do it!
My ever faithful bestie did come by after her dance lesson for the final sessions of the Family History Online event and we shared a pizza. The information relit her desire for memory keeping which is the whole purpose of the event in the first place. It would be hard to get my fire to burn any brighter.
Amazing Sunday
Sunday was an orgy of things I love to do. It started with Bill and I visiting my next door neighbor’s church. She is very active at First United Methodist Heath. While attending church is one of my favorite things, church shopping is not, but that’s what we’re doing now – again.
FUMAH is a happening place. I thought their photo-focused Lenten activities were genius and they have an active Women’s Group. There were several other things I really liked about it, but it’s not exactly the right fit for me. It’s a little on the liturgical side of things and the sermon was expository and topical, rather than exegesis. The music was lovely and they mix contemporary with traditional music, but they also broadcast the words on the wall without any music. I hate trying to follow some song I don’t know without being able to look at the music. I know this is the direction most churches are going, both in teaching style and music, but I’m looking for the unicorn.
From there we went for coffee and Bill wanted to try Dunkin Donuts. We both get tired of Starbucks, but Dunkin is not the answer. They don’t have a coffee fixing place. They just add the sugar and cream themselves, but not to Bill’s taste. The hot chocolate was a mix and they don’t have low fat or skim milk. However, the conversation was great and I did love my sausage and cheese kolache.
Next up was a visit to the Dallas Museum of Art and a stroll around Klyde Warren Park. We’d almost gone to the museum last Sunday, but had gotten distracted wandering around Deep Ellum and Uptown. Probably a good thing, because a new exhibition was opening and it might have been crowded.
I’m a member of the museum at the Ambassador level, but I’m not much of an Ambassador, because they’ve gone digital and I never know what’s going on. There was a time when my mailbox was full of all kinds of invitations and magazines from the museum. I loved it – but now everything comes to my email and email is just a lot of noise. They send me too much, so I just delete most of it and then when I want to know something, I have to go looking for it. If a subject line does catch my eye, then I have to print it out and it’s going to be in black and while and then it’s going to get lost on my desk, because it looks like everything else. So, the DMA & I aren’t really friends anymore.
Anyway, I did go and for some reason, they wanted to scan my membership card when I came in. I wonder what they scan if you aren’t a member. Then I had to go stand in line to get my tickets to the new exhibition. That is one good benefit of membership. I can take several people a day to the museum and get them into the exhibition free. You should call me and I’ll take you to this new exhibit, it’s gorgeous.
The name of the exhibit is Saints, Sinners, Lovers, and Fools: 300 Years of Flemish Masterworks. While I loved the art, I thought the first half title was hyperbolic. There are images related to all those nouns in the exhibit, but it is Flemish Masterworks, so there is no scandal. To my disappointment, the information on the wall is fairly sketchy and they have no audio tour or QR codes for more information. So, if you are not a fan of classical artworks, you’re going to have a hard time connecting the title to the artwork. You’ll be strolling through quickly and heading somewhere else.
However, if, like me, you love to see gorgeous figurative art from the past, you’re gonna love this one. Breathtaking altarpieces, intriguing portraits and even some vanitas. We went through it, double back to see it again and then enjoyed the third view also. After a quick stop in the gift shop we headed out to the park.
It seems there have been changes every time I go – probably because I don’t visit it often enough, but they’ve actually added new fountains at one end and upgraded the playground at the other. There are still lots of food trucks, but the restaurant is now Mi Cocina. Our visit was leisurely, but we didn’t really linger very much, because NorthPark was up next.
I love NorthPark. I wish I had a life that allowed me to go every day. I want to shop all the stores, look at all the plants and art and eat at all the places. Bill never wants to go, because it’s impossible to find a parking spot, but this time was different. They have reserved parking for low-e and hybrid cars. Bill has a hybrid. We parked next to a handicapped space and were right in front of an entrance.
I had a birthday gift card to spend and I wanted to go to Pandora. I upgraded my basic bracelet, because the arthritis in my thumbs just didn’t like the one I had. Now, I can get it off and on easy peasy. It will get a lot more wear. Their new thing is rose gold, but thank you, I’ll stick with my silver.
We enjoyed our stroll through NorthPark, especially the kid’s art they had on display in front of Macy’s, but I was dismayed to discover few things are where they used to be. It’s a big game of fruit basket turnover and while I didn’t recognize many of the new players, I fear some of my favorites my be out of the game, because something called Blue Nile is going up in the Brighton spot and I can’t find Brighton on the directory.
I came home from NorthPark very happy with my weekend. Next week we’ll have more New York, more Memory Keeping and another Weekend Report. Please come back to see me!!
There’s more than one way to skin a cat. We’re not talking animal cruelty here, I’m referring to the old saw which pointed out most jobs have more than one way to go about them. You say po-TAY-to and I say po-TAH-to. Same veggie, different pronunciations.
Well, Creative Memories has their own interpretation of digital scrapbooking and it’s not a photobook at all. It really is a scrapbook. The coverset is the same coverset you’d use for their traditional albums, but instead of a solid bookcloth or one with decoration embossed on it, your album can have your own photos on it, just like a photobook.
The Best of Both Worlds
My scrapbooking hit a bump in the road when digital came along, because Creative Memories hit a bump in the road. At the time, it just looked as if management was abandoning the traditional scrapbookers who had made them the premiere memory keeping company in the world, but it turned out they had abandoned a whole lot of stuff. We’ll just leave it at that. They went bankrupt and have been totally reorganized and refocused, but those were rough days in the scrapbooking world.
At the time, it seemed as if you had to stay on the traditional scrapbooking road or take the exit to digital everything. There were no solutions which embraced both formats.
I wasn’t ready for digital back then, so I stayed with traditional scrapbooking, but there was no good source for traditional scrapbooking supplies (except the huge stash of CM supplies I had bought up to meet the quarterly quota, which thank goodness is no longer a thing!) I eventually found another scrapbooking supplier which had the same style pages and coverset as CM, so that period of photographic unrest is not apparent on my scrapbook shelves.
Then CM returned and it felt like coming home. At first, I still wasn’t ready for digital, but these days I heartily embrace the CM solution for both traditional and digital scrapbookers. At first glance it looks like a traditional scrapbook. The construction of the coverset and the format of the pages is the same as the CM traditional album, but a closer look reveals the personal images printed on the coverset, just like they are on a photobook.
But wait there’s more! You can create a digital coverset for your traditional album if you want to stick with traditional pages, but want a personalized coverset. Or you can select a beautiful traditional coverset for your project, but all of your pages can be designed and printed digitally. And you have to know where I’m going now. No matter which coverset you choose, your pages can be both traditional and digital. The point is, you don’t have to choose.
Making It Work for You
Now, if you are a scrapbooker yourself, then your mind is exploding with possibilites. If you’re not a scrapbooker, then let me tell you why this is such a good idea. The photos and memorabilia for a Baby Boomer are going to be primarily analog. Generation Z is going to be totally digital. Generation X-er’s are going the start out analog and melt into digital, while Millenials might have anything.
I do custom albums for all generations. Baby Boomers and Millenials are easy. Baby Boomers generally want a traditional album, because that’s a more straightforward way to address their photo mess – even if they turn around and have the album pages digitized, it’s just simpler to work with what they have. Millennials go for online albums, because that’s how their brain works and they don’t want to kill trees.
With Generation X and Millennials, what they have in the way of photographs and memorabilia depends a lot on which direction their parents leaned. If like me, their parents had a hard time letting go of their analog camera and printed photos from the drug store, then the record of their lives, at least at the beginning, will be analog. Then there will be a period where some items are digital, but others are still analog. If their parents instead embraced the digital age from the very beginning, then they generally go the route of the Millenials, but they might print a photobook for their parents. (And that’s what Forever’s for!)
Since Gen X’ers and Millennials have both traditional and digital items, they might feel it would be necessary to make a choice, between scrapbooks and photobooks, but they don’t. It’s not necessary to digitize all the analog stuff to go in a photobook or print all the digital items, so for a traditional scrapbook. With CM digital, you can have a traditional scrapbook with both traditional pages for analog and printed pages for digital. Some people even get their digital items printed and add traditional photos or decoration to the printed page. There are no rules!! Only solutions and I can bring you all of them.
What Do You Have and What Do You Want?
I started the Memory Keeping 101 series the same way I begin my conversations with a custom scrapbook client. What do you have and what do you want? You answer may be that you have a little of everything and you’d like a solution to embrace both analog and digital. Well, here’s your solution. No matter what you have, CM has a scrapbooking system which will do either or both. Just give it all to me and let me at it. Or you can do it yourself. I’m here to help either way.
Come back tomorrow for The Weekend Report if you need suggestions for your weekend and on Wednesday, Travel Talk will be focused on NYC. On Thursday, we’ll be back to digital solutions from Forever.
MEMORY KEEPING 101– Artisan, Scrapbooking, but Digital
Digital Photo Gifts and Photobooks
You know the names – Snapfish, Shutterfly, Mixbook, SmugMug, etc. etc. etc. You go there. You drop your photos into a template. Maybe you can edit some, maybe you can’t. You can make gifts with photos, like blankets, coffee mugs, calendars and ornaments. You can also make bound photobooks.
Ever try to contact their customer service? I have chatted online. Either you’re talking to someone with a name five miles long that you can’t pronounce or it’s a bot. Doesn’t matter. They can’t help you, because if it is a real problem they don’t have a script for it. So they elevate your problem and good luck with that. I’m still waiting for my email from my elevated customer service call concerning a Christmas Card order a few years ago.
Quit that!! You can do all of that and more on Forever. Highest quality images, best quality products, quick turnaround and amazing selection. Here’s the difference. Those other guys are the big box store. Forever is me. Now I’m not doing all the work, but you have me so you never have to chat with a bot. I have Forever, so whatever it is that you want to do with your photos, I can get it done.
Since the main focus of my business is custom scrapbooking, I don’t spend much time trying to transform Snapfish customers into Forever customers. In fact, if you’re already memory keeping, then good for you. That’s what I want. I’m happy to tell you why I believe Forever is a better way to go, and I would love for you to buy these services from me instead of them, but my real target is people who just have a mess and want me to fix it. I would love it, if next time you go to print photos or make a calendar/coffee mug/photobook/blanket, you gave Forever a try, but what I want most is for you to keep on memory keeping.
And Then There Was Artisan
I’ll be honest with you. I don’t do all that photo gifting stuff for my own purposes. Perhaps that’s because I don’t have kids, grandkids or pets, but I think the real reason is because I’m a scrapbooker. I want my photos and memorabilia in an album, not on my coffee mug.
Because I’m a scrapbooker, I’m used to starting with a blank page, so all those photobook templates frustrate the heck out of me – even Forever photobook templates. I tried. I really tried and I ran, not walked, back to my traditional scrapbooks.
Then I discovered Artisan! With Artisan I can start with a blank page. Oh, they have all the templates in the world, if you want them. In fact, the training videos assume you want to use templates and teach from that standpoint, so my learning curve was pretty steep. However, after a few sessions, I skipped to the part where they just told me what the various buttons did, without telling me how they worked with templates. I haven’t looked back.
I still prefer traditional scrapbooking. Perhaps you know my husband and I own a real estate photography company. I sit at a computer all day long managing photos – downloading, uploading, receiving and delivering. When my real estate photography day is over, I would prefer to move to the scrapbooking table and do things manually. Don’t get me wrong, I will do digital photobooks, for my clients, for gifts and occasionally just for myself, but it’s just not my first love.
If like me, you just want to keep doing traditional scrapbooks, then you should at least allow Forever to print your photos. Here’s why they are the best:
Taking It to the Next Level
If digital scrapbooking is your thing, then before I go, I should tell you about Pixels 2 Pages. It’s an online community of digital scrapbookers. These people are serious about it. They even have retreats where they get together with their computers, either virtually or in person, to scrapbook. You can try it out for free for a month.
Online communities are not my thing, but they might be yours. I have met some of these people in person and they speak a language I don’t even understand. I think it’s easy to learn, but again, I’m primarily a traditional scrapbooker. I’d rather talk about the latest Border Maker or Punch, but, as I said, that’s me. I just wanted you to know it was there if you wanted it.
That’s all for today! We’ll visit the Metroplex tomorrow and go to NYC on Wednesday, but on Thursday, we’ll get back to Memory Keeping 101.
MEMORY KEEPING 101 – THE BEST PLACE TO STORE YOUR IMAGES
Who is Forever and Why Have I Never Heard of Them?
I have one very important thing I need to tell you and I need you to think seriously about it. If you aren’t paying for your photo storage, then someone is and you are the product. Even if you do pay for your storage, you probably have no idea what terms you acknowledged when you signed up and as soon as you stop paying, your photos will disappear.
I can hear you out there and you aren’t happy. You want to tell me why I am wrong. That’s OK. You’re thinking:
“I pay a lot for my iPhone/Android and this is one of my benefits.”
“I pay to store everything on the Cloud.”
“I pay for my photo prints/digital photobooks from Snapfish/Shutterfly/Mixbook/Mpix/Etc., so it’s not free.”
“Me and all my friends share photos on Google Photos/Drive and we’ve never had a problem.”
“I have a Prime account with Amazon, so I know you are way off base.”
“Well, I use Dropbox, so there!”
“I copied and pasted one of those announcements on my feed about Facebook not being able to use my photos.”
I hear you and I used to be just like you. In fact, I have lot of photos on my Android phone. I have two Dropbox accounts. I use Google Drive in my business and have shared on Google Photos. I have photos scattered across several photo printing sites. However, I haven’t fallen for the copy and paste stuff on Facebook.
Now, I have a question for you. Did you actually read the terms of the agreement you approved when you turned your photos over to whoever has them?
Did you give them permission to mine your photos for marketing purposes?
Can they sell your photos to third parties as stock photos?
Did they warn you they carried no responsibility if your photos disappeared?
Did they tell you they could compress and/or reformat your photos?
Did they tell you when you died your account would no longer exist?
Did they tell you they had the right to delete your photos whenever they so desired?
Did you read the part which explains when your photos become their property?
Do you know what will happen to your photos if they start charging for their storage and you don’t pay?
I could go on, but I think you are beginning to understand the problem. Now you are ready to consider Forever:
It’s simple. If you aren’t paying for your storage with money, then you are the product. If you are paying for your storage with anyone one else besides Forever, you (or someone) is going to have to pay for it month by month or year by year from now on.
Only with Forever do you pay once and own your storage space. Only with Forever are your photos safe for your life, plus 100 years, guaranteed. Only with Forever can you be sure your photos won’t lead to advertising you didn’t want. Only with Forever can you be sure your photos won’t end up being used for marketing or on some stock photo site without your knowledge and to someone else’s benefit. Only with Forever can you set up a succession plan past your own lifetime.
In simple terms, the rest of those guys have set up their companies to turn a profit for their shareholders. That’s who they are responsible to, not you. Forever is set up completely different. They use the model of an insurance company rather than like those other photo companies. When you pay for your storage with Forever, most of your money goes into a fund to provide photo storage into perpetuity, not to the bottom line to satisfy their shareholders.
Forever has a lot of other services and they are happy for you to pay them for digitizing your physical images, printing photos, coffee mugs and other products, as well as selling photo photobooks. They’ll gladly pocket the profit of these activities, but if you buy storage from them, then you’ve purchased the best digital photo storage in the world and no one will ever have to pay another penny for it.
If you hadn’t heard of Forever until you read this post, that’s because they don’t have a marketing budget like the rest of those guys. They are sold strictly by network marketing. If you’re interested, I’d love to tell you more, including all the ways to save money on Forever products.
Last week I told you that if you were going to start doing something about your mess and you wanted to do it yourself, sorting was going to be your first job. I also told you not buy up any fancy sorting equipment, to just use Ziplocks and shopping bags. Most people spend a lot of time in this phase, from a matter of hours to a matter of months. At some point, you’ll need to start your scrapbook and these are the basics.
The CM Album
As I have said before and will say often, I’m more interested in turning your mess into memories than I am in selling you products. However, I do have some strong opinions about which products are best for your scrapbooking projects.
To me, few things are more important than the album you choose for your scrapbooking. I’m not referring to what color you choose or if you’d like it to be embellished or want to add custom printing to the spine or cover. I’m talking about choosing a Creative Memories Album Cover over anything and everything else.
I’ve been scrapbooking a long time. There just isn’t anything out there any better for your project than a CM album. You might go to the craft store and find something you think is cuter. You might go online and find something less expensive. I’m telling you, if my advise means anything, you will use CM albums, and only CM albums, for your scrapbooking.
Why? Quality and durability are the main reasons. You’re going to put a lot of hard work into your album and you don’t want it falling apart in a couple of years. No one else makes albums that will do a better job for you for a longer period of time. CM also has the patented Flex-Hinge binding. This means your pages are going to lay flat and not have some kind of obstruction between the pages.
You may have started some other kind of album years ago or you might discover you can’t resist that album you saw at Hobby Lobby. I will still be your friend and I will continue to help you with your projects, but I’m not going to be very sympathetic when the other album fails and eventually, it will.
A proper CM album uses CM pages and only CM pages, which automatically include your page protectors. The pages come in a variety of formats and I will be happy to help you decide which is best for your projects, but they are designed specifically for CM albums and if you don’t use them, you are compromising the integrity of your album.
There are a world of tools and decorative items out there that have nothing to do with Creative Memories. You will never hear a peep from me about using them. Get those embellishments from Stampin’ Up. Buy your tools from the Michael’s clearance rack. Go to Hobby Lobby for your stickers and papers. I don’t care. I find myself lingering in the scrapbook aisles, too. However, I do think CM albums and pages are your best bet.
One more thing – adhesives. Creative Memories Tape Runners are the gold standard. I’ve used everything. I’ve been known to run out of Tape Runner in the middle of a project and have not waited until I could order from CM. I’ve been given stuff. I’ve picked stuff up on the clearance rack and at the dollar store. Whenever I deviated from CM adhesives, I was always sorry. Like the pages themselves, there are a number of types of adhesives, the wonderful Tape Runners and several other items for a variety of uses. All of them are great and I use them all, depending on what I am sticking down and what I am sticking it to.
When I recommend you exclusively use CM products, this is what I mean. Get your albums, pages and adhesives from CM and no one else. To begin your project, you will need a cover set, a package of pages and a Tape Runner. This will cost you less than $75 and your memories will last a lifetime.
This is where you begin. The basic building blocks of a scrapbook which will turn your mess into memories. You are the most important ingredient in your scrapbook, but you’ll be glad if you take my advice concerning these items. Happy scrapbooking. Let me know how I can help. Next week, we’ll talk tools.
MEMORY KEEPING 101 – THE VALUE OF MEMORY KEEPING VS THE COST OF YOUR MESS
What Are Your Memories Worth?
Let’s talk worst case scenarios. Your house has burned down. Your family and your pets are safe, but everything you had is smoke and ash. You are grateful beyond measure to be able to hug your kids, but in the days to come, it’s not the new sofa or your smart TV you’ll regret losing most. It will be that box of photos under the bed.
While there are many families who face this scenario and other tragedies every day, I’ll agree with you, you’re odds are good. You probably won’t be a victim of a worst case scenario. You’ll probably go on living with your mess for decades to come. Along the way you may toss out those slides and home movies, because you don’t even have the equipment to access them anymore. You promise yourself someday you’re going to go through the photos in the box under the bed or in your phone, someday.
The real deal is most people don’t. They kick the can down the road until they retire, until they have more time, until they have more money, until the kids move out, until they hand the mess over to their kids or until they are dead and the mess is someone else’s problem. I have a challenge for you. If these photos and memorabilia aren’t important to you and you’re never going to do anything with them anyway, why not just throw them away or delete them now. Oh, you’re still with me, huh?
I know you have the best of intentions, but the tyranny of the urgent has a way of keeping us from addressing what is important to us. And then, too often, it’s too late. Your kids are looking for a decent picture of you on their phones, because the funeral is in a couple of days and they need a photo to put in the program.
Now, let’s talk best case scenarios. There was no fire, you have no mess and your memories are totally curated, tagged, captioned and safe for generations to come. Can you actually put a dollar amount on what that would be worth to you and to your family? The price of a vacation, of a boat, of your Starbuck’s habit, of a bigger TV, newer phone? You’re probably thinking nothing is more valuable than your memories, but you might still be reluctant to do anything about your mess.
Turning your mess into safe, shareable memories isn’t something that can happen overnight, but it can happen and it can happen more quickly than you might realize. However, it’s probably going to cost more than you want it to, in both time and money. Heck, these days everything costs more than you want it to and it usually takes longer than you want. When it comes to your mess the longer you wait, the longer it will take and the more it will cost.
What’s It Going to Be – Time or Money?
If you’d like to defeat the tyranny of the urgent and start doing something about what’s important, let’s do something about your mess. I’m not going to sugarcoat it. There’s a sliding scale between time and money. The faster you want it, the more money it will cost. The more of your time you’re willing to invest, the less money it will take.
If spending money is the least painful solution, I’ll curate your mess it for $15 an hour and put it in the format of your choice for as little as $500 an album (an album is 24 two-sided pages). If you’re going digital, then you’ll need to also purchase storage, but I have a permanent solution you’ll love.
If you’d rather do it yourself, just because you want to, or to save some money, then get ready to start sorting. That’s where it all starts, whether I do it or you do. Starting is free. I’ll be happy to give you lots of free advice, too. Like don’t buy fancy sorting equipment. Nothing works better than Ziplocks and shopping bags – and if you don’t have any, you can borrow some of mine.
You can spend a fortune on memory keeping tools and supplies, whether you’re going digital or you prefer more traditional solutions, but it is worth every penny. Believe me, I know. Ask my husband how much money I’ve spent creating these scrapbooks to hold all our memories. If you really want to get him going, ask him how much profit I’m making in this campaign to preserve your memories. But be warned, you might make him cry. He’s figured out I do this for love, not money. It’s my passion. In the end, all we have left are our memories or a mess. I don’t want you or your family to be stuck with a mess.
Next week, I’m going to explain help you decide whether you want your memory keeping to be a hobby, a craft or a service you buy from someone else.
What you have and what you want are important considerations for anyone tackling the job of preserving memories. Your time and money budget is a huge factor, too. However, the most important thing to think about as you plan your memory keeping activities is your target audience.
None of us are alike when it comes to the motivation for our memory keeping. Some just want to capture their child’s life to share when they are older. Others are heritage hunters who are tracing their family lines to other places or other times. People who are grieving often want to capture the memories of someone they have lost. There are also those who are looking into the far future, past anyone who is alive today, to someone they will never know, who might wonder about the past. These are just a few examples. Think about what motivates you and then let’s talk about what format would be best suited to your project.
Some of the most faithful Memory Keepers are like me. We preserve our memories for ourselves. There are no kids, grandkids or great grandkids we are doing this for. We are not famous or even infamous. We just enjoy our lives and treasure those we love, the places we’ve been to and the things we’ve done. We only have to suit ourselves.
Explore the Options
Memory keeping should never be a chore, so while your eventual audience is a factor, it’s not the only thing to consider. Whatever format you choose, you should enjoy doing it or you should find someone to do it for you. The one thing you should not do is leave your mess under the bed or floating around unorganized on your phone. My job is to help you get from your mess, to wherever you want to go.
There’s a very simple reason I prefer traditional scrapbooking. My husband and I run a real estate photography business. He’s the photographer and I do everything else. A whole lot of the everything else part is shuffling photos around my computer and the internet. I’ve tried digital scrapbooking, but it’s far too much like my day job. If digital scrapbooking were my only option, I too would just have a mess rather than shelves of completed albums I dearly treasure.
I am of the mindset that getting it done is more important than the way you do it and I know, whichever method you use, there are conversion options. I want to see people enjoying their memories and sharing them with others. If, like me, you’d enjoy crafting traditional scrapbooks, then that’s your answer. Create beautiful albums you’ll look at frequently and share them with others. If, at the same time, you think your target audience would prefer digital, don’t feel guilty about working in a format you enjoy. Do the scrapbooks traditionally and then digitize them. I can show you how.
If all the stuff that comes with traditional scrapbooking gives you the heebie geebies and makes you want to hug a tree, then you are a digital memory keeper. There are a variety of ways to embrace paperless memory keeping. If you think digital is your way to go, then you still have a lot of decisions to make. From streamlined online-only albums without any decoration, to elaborately decorated digital pages, there are great tools out there for being a digital memory keeper. Once you’ve done your digital job, then you can easily share it all with anyone having internet access. If any of those people would prefer something they can hold in their hand, then they have options they can pursue using the work you’ve completed for them.
And remember, if you know there’s no way you’re going to have the time, energy or desire to get this job done, regardless of the format, then you still don’t have to live with the mess or the guilt. One of my favorite things to do is take your mess and turn it into whatever memory keeping format you’d like to have. I love the excitement of finishing up one of my own albums and then paging through my completed project, but that’s nothing compared to the day I deliver a completed album. It’s the greatest feeling in the world for me and I’d love to do your album.
A Final Thought About Digital
In some ways, my passion for traditional scrapbooking is out of touch with the times. It’s a craft I don’t think will ever disappear completely, but I confess the results can be burdensome. I have an entire wall of traditional scrapbooks. My husband complains about them all the time and my nieces and nephews, who will have to deal with what remains of my life when its over, will most likely throw my beloved albums away.
So, I have worked out a digital solution for the future. It will transcend any changes in technology, it will not cost a penny for future generations to maintain, it is guaranteed for generations to come and it is also guaranteed safe from those who should not have access to your information and images. It’s not any of those familiar names like Apple, Google, Amazon, Snapfish, Dropbox etc. and we should talk if that’s where your memories are stored.
In the future, I will talk more about my digital solution, but in case my post inspires you to do something online with your mess, I wanted to warn you away from uploading to these well-known sites without being aware of their lesser known consequences. Come back next week and we’ll talk about your investment in memory keeping vs. the price of your mess.
For some, it is shoeboxes of photos under the bed. For others it’s stacks of home movies, video and slides. Still others have their mess on their phones or computers. Some people have all of those messes, plus photos tucked away in drawers, cabinets and closets. The bottom line is their memories are more of a problem than a treasure. Folks are overwhelmed with what they have and they feel guilty about it.
The first step in starting is to start. Call me up and let’s talk about it. It doesn’t cost anything and you’ll feel better about yourself and your mess when we’re done! Let me warn you, this is absolutely the hardest part, so do not wait. Don’t wait until you see me next time. Don’t wait for a better time. Don’t wait until you are more organized. Rip off the bandage, tell me you have a mess and get that behind you.
How the conversation goes will depend on you. Some people cry throughout our first meeting. Others are strictly business and want a bottom line expense amount. Before we can go anywhere I have to understand your particular mess.
The first question I will ask is, “What do you have?” and the next is “What do you want?” While everyone has a mess, these questions determine the path each of us takes to resolve the mess. Once we establish these two important items, then (and only then) can we begin to talk about what is next.
Your Mess Might Not Be as Bad as You Think!
Another important question I will ask is this, “Do you want to do it yourself or do you want me to do it for you.” Recently I got a call from a woman who had lost her mom, but gained a mess. The mess sat on her dining room table for two years and she’d spent most of the time feeling guilty about it. She’d attempted to sort through some of it, but mostly it just sat there making her feel bad.
Whether you want to do it yourself or you want me to do it, budget is always a consideration. When I quoted my pricing to this particular customer, she couldn’t hire me fast enough. As a professional who was paid by the hour, my fees sounded like a real bargain to her. She couldn’t wait for me to come pick up her stuff, but from a couple of jokes she made, I could tell she was a little concerned about my hourly rate for curating. Not that it was an unreasonable fee, but that her job could take months on end. Remember, the photos had been sitting on her dining room table for two years.
The first day of the project I emailed her to let her know my progress and to let her know I would be giving her updates along the way. That seemed to relieve her and she asked specifically to be kept abreast of the number of hours I was accumulating on her project. A few days later, I sent an update and told her I had about another three hours of curating to go. She was both astounded and pleased. She had no idea I would be able to complete the job in such a short time.
I went from three boxes of unsorted photos and memorabilia to being ready to start in about six hours, over a matter of days, not weeks. I had a few photos I needed her to identify and a few questions my curating had raised before I could actually start, but I had accomplished in 6 hours what she hadn’t been able to do in two years. The point is this, your mess might not be as awful as you think it is, so give me a call and let’s talk about it.
More to Come
I’m congratulating myself on getting this post ready for publication. Scrapbooking is my passion, but it’s also my side gig, not my livelihood – at least not yet. Projects have trickled in over the last year, almost of their own volition, but I’ve wished for time to reach out with an occasional post, to encourage people to think about their own scrapbooking projects and how I could be helping them.
As with scrapbooking, starting is the hardest part and now I have. Over the coming weeks, I’ll be blogging about other aspects of my passion – from general information about memorykeeping, like this post, to the coolest news toys and innovations available from the companies I represent.
So, if you have a mess, a passion for scrapbooking or another form of memorykeeping, keep an eye out for my posts or subscribe to my blog and the posts will show up in your email.
jane sadek 